______________________________

To say the least, a Ukrainian man was shocked when he found out that a long-time friend and neighbour was so displeased by his homemade borshch that she poured her portion into the toilet. Borshch, a hearty soup made of beets and meat stock, is a Ukrainian national dish and, apparently, an inviolable source of personal pride. According to the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, the man invited his neighbour over to his home in Crimea, on the Black Sea, to enjoy the borshch that he’d made from scratch, but she was displeased. The article said that she “harshly criticised” the soup, then, she poured it down the toilet. Reportedly, the host was so offended that he grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed her in the stomach. According to investigators, the man was drunk at the time. When he realised that his friend could die, he frantically called paramedics. The man later told police, “I begged her not to die because otherwise they would throw me in jail”. The woman succumbed to her injuries in the ambulance.